On Tuesday, nearly 72 percent of eligible Israeli voters participated in its 20th elections, exercising a defining feature of the Middle East's only democracy. B'nai B'rith celebrated this feat throughout the election process.

Forty-six years prior to this election, on March 17, 1969, Golda Meir was selected as the nation's fourth prime minister. In April, 1969, B'nai B'rith's National Jewish Monthly noted her premiership by revisiting her heroic meetings with Emir Abdullah of Transjordan in the lead up to Israel's independence.

Read the entirety of the piece, written by Bernard Postal and Henry W. Levy, below:

Golda Meir's Secret Missions (National Jewish Monthly, April 1969)

Mrs. Golda Meir, the septuagenarian grandmother who became Israel's Prime Minister on the eve of the Jewish State's 21st anniversary, once made a bold undercover attempt to prevent the Arab invasion of Israel in 1948.

In October, 1949, before the United Nations had voted to partition Palestine but after the British had announced their impending withdrawal, the Jewish Agency tried to reach an understanding with Emir Abdullah of Transjordan. In the closing weeks of the Mandate his attitude became crucial. If he did not move against the Jews, neither would the other Arab states. If he ordered his Arab Legion to march, the other Arab armies would follow, not only because of treaty commitments, but because Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon did not trust Abdullah. The Arab states were united in opposition to Zionism but at loggerheads on how to prevent the emergence of the Jewish state. The chief reason for the disunity was Abdullah's ambition to grab the areas of Palestine the UN had set aside for an Arab state, as well as Jerusalem. Abdullah was well aware that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, as well as Syria, was scheming to set up an independent Arab state in Palestine, with the Mufti as its head. To thwart this planned encirclement by his enemies, Abdullah was willing to come to terms with the Jews.